Thirsty Albanians

The Economist has a graphic examining the world’s leading beer markets. It makes note that China consumes the most beer (every year, Chinese consume 306.2 million hectoliters of beer, whatever those are), followed by the United States (234.6 million hectoliters). Of course, it’s not per capita, and China has more than four times as many people as the United States (1.3 billion to 300 million, as of July 2007), so really Americans are by far the greater booze hounds. Anyway, all this prompted me to look up which country’s people are the greatest per capita booze hounds. Trusty Wikipedia has the data. And the answer is… Albania. As of 2004, the average Albanian apparently drinks 195.4 liters of beer. Americans drink 81.6 liters on average and place fourteenth. As for the Chinese, Wiki lists 37 countries and they don’t even crack the list.

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the author | mckinsey consultant based in london | former speechwriter for queen rania of jordan | former economics writer at council on foreign relations | winner of 2009 emmy award | see full profile at LeeHudsonTeslik.com